


Nowhere Else

by die-forellex (heatinfreezing)



Series: What Remains [4]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Missing Moments, Post canon, in surviving peace verse, levi pov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 03:10:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13378887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heatinfreezing/pseuds/die-forellex
Summary: Now that he’s seen her, been with her, known her, there seems to be nowhere else to look.[Levi PoV from Chapter III of Surviving Peace, will make sense standing alone however]





	Nowhere Else

**Author's Note:**

> I have some writers block and you guys have been wanting Levi PoV from my long fic. Here is some of part III from Levi’s PoV. My writing style has changed (improved?? IDFK) a lot since I wrote this story, so it honestly kinda reads like something new. If you haven’t read my long story....TLDR, Rivamika be banging out their feelings instead of talking about them and it all is kinda a mess.

_Mikasa runs away._

Over the last month he has learned many things about her, things that he’d never taken note of years ago because they hadn’t been necessary. 

He hadn’t needed to know the fullness of her bottom lip, the curious birthmark on her shoulder, the beauty of the freckles below her left breast, the odd, deliberate looking scar on her forearm that she absently traces the outline of when she thinks no one is watching.

She responds to a rough touch with defiance but gentleness makes her surrender, and this fact had no place in his life years ago. 

_Mikasa runs away._

He’s learned what not to ask about.

Levi prides himself on his perception. He’s always had to be quick, always had to be able to gauge someone’s intent. Is the man on the corner of the street a killer or a hustler? Is the woman in the alley a tired crone or a pickpocket? The way a person holds themselves can tell a number of things. Do they hunch their shoulders, walk with a limp, do they make eye contact when they speak?  These are all important things to consider when assessing intent.

He’s played these games of perception with himself for years without even thinking about it, observing the smallest details about those around him until he’s certain he understands them.

With Mikasa it’s different. He doesn’t need to play these observation games.

Still, he watches her. When he looks at her he understands not only her but himself. How he failed to notice this years ago escapes him. Perhaps it’s simply different now. So many years later, the people precious to them that once filled the distance between them has now become a void in their absence.

It’s not natural to feel so empty. In years past he’d always held back, always prided himself on the restraint he’d employed with his emotions. Everything, anything, for what needed to be done.

But the years that followed the war were different. Instead of holding back, there had been nothing  _to_  hold back, nothing to rein in, nothing to feel...everything simply numb, the purpose of his life blown out as easily as a candle in the wind.  

All of it changed on that day he’d fought her.  Something inside him he’d accepted as dead stirred to life at the contact of her fists. The sweet feeling of exertion in his body reminded him of what it was like to have a purpose.

Now that he’s seen her, been with her,  _known_  her, there seems to be nowhere else to look.

He can feel the tension between the two of them as it fills up his body, a strange energy that swells like a wave, cresting upon itself until it crashes into the shore. It settles down into his bones until he’s not sure if what’s transpiring between the two of them is coming from inside of them both or from something else.

He knows she feels it too. He knows that he’s her own look inside of herself, all of the parts that she doesn’t want to accept, everything she is still afraid of about herself.

Maybe that’s why sometimes it seems like she can’t stand him, that she’s angry, not only with him but all of the world.  

Levi does not keep any Gods, but what transpires between him and her makes him question his disbelief in the divine, if perhaps God is simply small moments made magnificent.

It’s easy. His fingers inside of her, his mouth tracing the shell of her ear, it’s all intuitive to him in a way he’s never experienced but he doesn’t question it because it all feels right.

“Do that again,” she demands as he bites her earlobe and curls his fingers inside of her. She gasps and he laughs a little, her desperation so apparent despite the fact that she tries to hold back.

She glares at him, hisses “shut up!” and clutches at his arms, digging her fingernails into his skin.

He loves that look. Her defiance, the way she fights against her own wants speaks to him. It’s something he knows well, something he’s done for as long as he can remember. It’s a challenge and that excites him more than he’d like to admit, so he moves his hand the way she likes, does everything he’s learned over the past month that makes her sigh and moan.

She cries out and throws her head back, bites her bottom lip and it takes everything he has to deny the urge to throw her on the bed and have her right then. But resist he does because he knows if he waits it’ll be better, that they both need more time.

He also needs to know. He needs to hear her say it, needs for even a moment to feel needed by someone. He hates himself for this weakness, hates how aimless he’s felt for the last decade. He wished this whole time that it would just disappear.

Nothing worked until this.

“What has you all worked up like this, makes you seem desperate,” the taunt tumbles from his mouth easily, as natural as anything else they do, “are you feeling desperate?”

He sees the frustration she feels furrowing her brow despite the way she jerks her hips into his hand, equal parts need and obstinance pushing her forward.

She’s not going to break, she could do this for hours, ride this place between pleasure and frustration in a way Levi is certain would outlast him.

“Just say it, say what you want,” he murmurs into her ear and she groans.

She cards her fingers into his hair, drags them along his scalp before she says: “Make me come, then you can fuck me,” he voice low and throaty against his neck.

Her words set fire to his blood, make him move with purpose as he gets her off with his fingers moving slick inside her, his teeth on her throat and her body shaking when she comes.

“Now, I want you  _now_.”

Her words overwhelm him, make him move without thinking as he pins her down onto bed and pushes inside of her. He can feel his pulse in his head, her fingertips digging into his shoulders are the only thing tethering him to reality, her warmth the only thing he’s ever needed, her heel digging into his back when she asks him to fuck her harder his lifeline.

He props himself up on his forearm and touches her again because he wants her to finish again, wants to see her body unravel beneath him, this time while he’s inside of her.

It takes everything he has to hold on, to resist the urge to lose himself completely in her body but he bites his cheek, clenches his jaw as he coaxes pleasure from her. Her cheeks flushed, chest heaving, his name on her lips, her inhibitions gone for just a moment is what finishes him.

He collapses on her, their sweat slicked chests pressed together in the hot summer air. He looks into her eyes: grey irises framed by thick, straight, lashes and wide pupils looking at him, any coldness he’s experienced from her gone, her expression almost dreamlike when she pulls him down and slants her mouth over his.

It doesn’t even occur to him that this is the first time they’ve kissed, doesn’t even register that this is a first of any kind as he moves his mouth against her mouth. 

He wants more, isn’t sure that he could ever have enough of this fire burning away everything until there’s nothing left separating them. He’s sure that if he could he’d burn like this forever, the feeling so all-consuming that he doesn’t even have the sense to be terrified.

She stops moving against him, her body tense when it’d been soft against his a moment earlier. He pulls away. 

“What’s wrong?”

She pushes him off of her roughly, her eyes wide and hands shaking as she pulls on her clothes from the floor. 

“What’s wrong?”

He asks her again, his chest tight and brow furrowed. He’s not silly enough to approach her when she’s like this but she can’t even look at him.

“I need to leave,” she grits out. He sees it in her eyes. Where she had once been with him she is now far, far away inside of herself, somewhere he’s sure no one can truly find her.

Her pink dress twirls around her when she turns and leaves without even shutting the door.

_Mikasa runs away._

It’s something he’s learned.

* * *

For the next week Levi is stuck thinking about her running. As long as he’s known her she’s always been this way in some sense, retreating inside of herself to protect her all-to-fragile heart from hurt.

Mikasa doesn’t come by his home and he doesn’t go to Sasha and Connie’s, an unspoken distance between them again.

He should’ve known whatever happened was different that day, that it was too close, too much for either of them, that closeness creates pain and pain is overwhelming. 

Levi still wonders if pain is preferable to nothing, if the aimless, numb feeling creeping up inside of him that she’d dispelled is preferable or really its own kind of torture.

He cleans his floors until his knuckles are raw and red, rides each of the horses until they’re exhausted and can’t continue so he wraps a tree in quilts and hits it again, and again, and again until the sun sets below the horizon.

If she’s gone to him she’s gone, there’s nothing he can do and he doesn’t blame her, doesn’t begrudge her whatever hurt she is hiding from him because she doesn’t owe him anything.

He’s tired but can’t sleep, a familiar state for him so he sits on the chair in the attic and lets himself indulge in pathetic thoughts of her, thoughts that he wishes he didn’t have. 

The smell of her skin, the coarse yet smooth texture of her dark hair between his fingers, the way that the summer sun has warmed her complexion dance around in his mind, each one a tantalizing secret he holds close while wishing he could banish it from his heart. 

Even simple things like the way she will put her hands on her waist and sigh after she’s set down something heavy, how he’s learned she loves fashion magazines, the rouge she paints her cheeks with and the silver case she keeps it in.

This kind of thinking is foreign to him and makes him uncomfortable, so he goes downstairs to sit on the porch, the muggy summer heat almost stifling with air so thick it sits on his skin.

He hears something, a rustling noise over near the large oak tree. It’s too loud to be a raccoon or some other pest, so he walks over to investigate. Part of him hopes it’s some dumbass trying to rob him, perhaps a wayward horse thief clumsily hoping to break into the stable. There’s nothing he’d love more than a distraction.

Sure enough, he hears muffled talking, so he throws his knife with a satisfying thump into the tree.

“Alright, show yourself and I’ll decide if I feel like mortally wounding or just maiming.”

He walks closer and sees a fucking horse tied up.

This person is stupid as hell.

He almost feels badly until he sees someone stumble out from behind the horse.

“Mikasa?”

He’s sure it’s her, dressed in her nightgown, barefooted with her old red scarf hanging over her neck despite the summer heat. He can barely see her in the dim moonlight, but he’s sure it’s her.

He doesn’t like how his first reaction to her presence is relief. He doesn’t want to want her, doesn’t want to feel so miserable being so alone like he knows he deserves.

“Hey.”

She looks at him, cheeks flushed, lips slightly parted, hands resting at her sides and he hates how beautiful she is. He hates himself more for noticing something so pointless even more.

She moves towards him but stumbles over a root. Mikasa never stumbles, is never clumsy so seeing it is nothing short of unsettling. Even stranger still, she recovers slowly.

“Are you drunk?”

“No!”

He crosses his arms and frowns.

She shifts her weight uncomfortably and sighs.

“Yes, fine, I’ve been drinking,” she looks down at her feet, “can I sleep here?”

He’s thankful that something still draws them together for whatever reason, that even if she’s drunk she still wanted to be near him even if the very notion is insane.

He pushes that aside though and turns away from her.

“Yeah, sure.”

Levi takes her inside, up the staircase to the bedroom in the attic without asking any questions. He doesn’t need to know why she came here drunk as a skunk in the middle of the night after running out on him a week ago.

“You can sleep on the bed, I don’t use it.”

But she clearly doesn’t need his permission as she’s already pulled down the quilt and tucked herself in. She takes off her scarf, wraps it around her hand and clutches it to her chest, even burying her face in the red wool and smiling contentedly as she snuggles herself into bed.

“Goodnight,” she says almost sweetly as she closes her eyes, her dark lashes resting on the apples of her cheeks and the lamp still on.

How the fuck does she just fall asleep like that?

He spends most of his time up late at night, unable to keep errant thoughts away and, embarrassingly enough, nervous about the nightmares that often plague him at night.

_But there she is, sleeping like a baby._

He turns off the lamp and sits down in his chair. He closes his eyes.

Levi hears the crickets outside, the hum of the summer heat, but more immediately Mikasa’s breathing. It’s steady and vital, a comforting rhythm he feels more than hears as he lets himself drift off to sleep.


End file.
